


A Gradual Acceleration

by PunJedi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale-centric, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 14:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19770025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunJedi/pseuds/PunJedi
Summary: Aziraphale has to deal with 6000 years worth of pent-up feelings and what happens when the world doesn't end on schedule. It's a tricky thing, love; his modus operandi has been to ignore it. But there reaches a point at which it simply cannot be ignored.Crowley is willing to wait, though.





	A Gradual Acceleration

**Author's Note:**

> Back again, this time with an Aziraphale-centered fic, because I cannot seem to stop writing about these two celestial idiots. It's your obligatory getting together fic—fluff, cute confessions, dealing with Aziraphale's 6000 years worth of repression, the works.  
> Anathema just wants them to pull their heads out of their asses.  
> (Assumes that post-apocalypse that wasn't, everyone who was there at the airfield stayed in touch, visit each other on occasion, and are aware that Aziraphale and Crowley are celestial beings.)  
> Thanks for reading!

A heart was worth rather more than a sword. Any old fool—and here, old fool meant practiced blacksmith—could forge a sword. It took much more than that to forge a heart. Years and years of experience living life, wearing away at the edges, carving it into something individual. And, of course, a tumble in the sheets at the right time and the requisite nine months after—though that’s just a must for humans. Divine entities didn’t get up to that sort of thing (especially not angels; the process of childbirth was Satan’s hand in humanity). But they still had hearts.

(Metaphorically, as in, the capacity for love. The human forms that they donned had hearts, mostly, unless they were in a rush and had to settle for a hand-me-down body, one missing some things like spleens or circulatory systems. It was all unnecessary for a celestial being, of course, except for the spleen, which was less than unnecessary.)

And love was one of few things that could hurt a heavenly being and an earthly one in equal measure. Might even hurt the heavenly ones worse—because humans’ lives were firecrackers, blazing and then fizzling out. Love was a brilliant flame, fast extinguished, the pain as short-lived as their lives. For the immortal… it was slower, quieter, but constant. A dull, steady ache as opposed to a flash-bang-pop. They didn’t change so fast as humans, not their minds and never their hearts. Love, especially the unrequited, was signing on to an eternity’s worth of dull heartbreak. Most angels forewent it entirely. It was the safer thing to do.

So while Aziraphale might play fast and loose with flaming weapons handed down to him from on high, he played his heart closer to his chest. (In his chest, to be exact. Where hearts and things like that belonged. That was both a truth of human anatomy—tricky thing that it was—and a metaphor for just how tightly he held his heart to himself.)

Oh, yes, he’s an angel—love, generally, came easily to him. A sort of universal love for all of mankind, generalized good will. It’s part of the job description of being an angel. Must have wings, an entirely tan and/or white wardrobe, and Good Will Toward Mankind. Also, an angel must not dance. But Aziraphale thought three out of four wasn’t bad.

Anyway. Love. He could sense it like a shark might sense vibrations in the ocean, as if love disturbed the air around him, wound like wind through his hair, took up space and was tangible. The whole air was swimming with it, most days, a dull hum as he wandered the human world, ebbing and flowing like the tide. So, as one so attuned to love, it followed that he must be aware of it within himself.

And he was. He was, in fact, so aware of it, on such a deep, instinctual level, that the part of him that knew locked itself away in order to protect the rest of him from it. Because it, despite being naught but a small sliver of an angel’s unconscious, was surprisingly well-versed in the pointless lines the world liked to draw in the sand. It understood that should it let the rest of Aziraphale know what it knew, Aziraphale would not handle it very well, and probably do something unwise like run away to become a hermit on one of the lesser planets of Alpha Centauri.

A heart was worth more than a sword, which is why he planned never to part with the former; but although he didn’t know it yet, he’d given both away on the exact same day.

But six thousand years was a long time even for an angel’s unconscious mind, long enough for it to tire, to slip. So, as the years slipped by, Aziraphale’s iron-clad defense of his own heart began to falter. Not crumble to bits, not collapse like a straw house in an earthquake, but loosen. Some of the mortar weakened and chipped away; some bricks shifted; the rain caused the foundation to sink an inch. Not much. But it was something.

Then 1941 happened, and bombed the whole damn fortress.

Now, Aziraphale’s unconscious still wasn’t quite sure that he could handle the whole messy thing, but it didn’t really have a choice, did it? Not even Aziraphale, when faced with such a gesture—a rescue of his very valuable books following a rescue of himself, a scene that could have only been made more romantic had violin music played in the background—could resist the tug of love, however verboten. Which opened the floodgates, so to speak, and let over five thousand years of accumulated affection tumble out onto the banks of his heart.

It was quite overwhelming. Aziraphale did not run off into the stars, but it was a near thing. (For one, he couldn’t very well teleport his bookshop all those lightyears. For another, the Ritz didn’t cater there. The Ritz didn’t cater anywhere, but at least in London it was easily accessible.)

He did, however, jet off to France to muddle through his confusion in between crêpes. Which worked well enough that when he saw Crowley again, he was able to fall into their usual patterns of conversation with relative ease—though carefully skirting around that business of holy water, because honestly, what was he  _ thinking _ , the foolish demon.

And life went on. Aziraphale was able to ignore this particular love, disguise it under the general good will and pretend it wasn’t even there. Sometimes he slipped, of course—it might leak out of a too-fond smile, or rim the corners of his eyes, or poke its head up when good wine and better company made him loose and incautious. But for the most part, it was hidden, where it should be, where no one Above, Below, or in between could find it.

“Are you and Crowley married?”

Hidden, except—apparently—from one vexing little boy. (Aziraphale had previously been fond of Adam, a fondness fathered by a few visits to Tadfield following Armageddidn’t. He’d almost considered the boy a godson, of sorts. Now, though…)

Looking around as though Heaven was still peering over his shoulder—or worse,  _ Crowley _ —Aziraphale stammered and stuttered and tripped over his tongue. He tried to get his mind to start back up, but it was stubbornly refusing, like a car engine that had decided enough was enough. Eighty years of ignoring the issue meant that he was as equipped to deal with this question as he was to do complex calculus after having ice water dumped over his head.

That is to say, with a complete lack of idea in regards to the right answer, and a great deal of shock.

“Alright, then,” said Adam, and turned away like that was the end of it. Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief, inordinately glad for the short attention spans of human children, before: “I’ll just ask Crowley.”

“No!” Aziraphale blurted. He hadn’t kept his feelings concealed for the better half of a century for one nosy Antichrist to lay it all in the open. “Don’t, please, I—”

Adam frowned at him, puzzled. Dog yapped. “Well, he’d know as well as you, wouldn’t he?”

“I—well, yes, but—oh, for Heaven’s sake, Adam.” The shock cooled to irritation. “Haven’t you learned a thing called tact?”

“No. Is that like marriage?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips and huffed. Well, there was nothing for it. He was going to have to answer Adam’s question, no matter how much the necessary denial hurt. “It is not, dear boy. But to answer your  _ tactless _ question, Crowley and I are not  _ married _ . What a suggestion.” What a painfully accurate and one-sided suggestion.

“Oh. Well, maybe you should be.”

Aziraphale experienced a momentary flash of fear that he was about to be zapped onto an altar with Crowley walking down the aisle toward him. Luckily, following the not-apocalypse, Adam’s reality-warping had tapered out, until they were—reasonably—sure that he was an ordinary human boy, if with a few abnormal accomplishments under his belt. Anathema, at least, claimed that his aura was back to somewhat-regular size. They had collectively decided not to press the issue, and if Dog’s eyes flickered red from time to time, they looked the other direction.

Instead, he chuckled nervously, still glancing around in case any doves or rice or rings made themselves evident, and replied, “Oh, no, I don’t think so. We’re—not, well, compatible.”

Adam hummed in a way that would be innocuous for a normal boy, but was vaguely intimidating in the mouth of the used-to-be Antichrist. Aziraphale swallowed. “Because you’re both men?”

Of all the things Aziraphale had been expecting, that wasn’t one of them. He forgot, sometimes, humanity’s fixation on gender. “Oh, no, Heavens not. For one, we’re neither of us men. Not really—oh, we both present male, by your standards, most of the time, but your concept of gender is so confining—” Adam stared at him, rather blankly, and he trailed off. “Uh, no. Not because of that. Er, rather, I think the fact that your kind is finally embracing love regardless of gender is quite lovely, if a little late.”

“Is it because you’re an angel and he’s a demon, then?”

Now that, that was right on the money. No point in denying it. “Uh, yes.”

“But you said that you and Crowley tricked Heaven and Hell. Dressed up as each other and told them to never bother you again.”

“We did do that, yes.”

Adam looked up at him, thoughtfully, and then shrugged. “Way I see it, being an angel or a demon wouldn’t matter anymore. No one cares but you.” With that, he walked away, Dog trailing beside him, likely going to find his friends and play as if he hadn’t just metaphorically punched Aziraphale in the gut.

He managed to find enough breath to shout after him, “Oh, please don’t tell Crowley about this!”

There wasn’t a response, but Aziraphale wasn’t particularly worried by it. He was far too busy being worried by Adam’s parting words.

_ No one cares but you _ . Unfortunately, it wasn’t true. Crowley almost certainly cared—the thing about a romantic relationship was that it went two ways at minimum—and Aziraphale. Well, he didn’t have the courage to risk their friendship of 6000 years, give or take a century or two, over such a minor thing as his own feelings.

At least Adam had come to him first, rather than asking Crowley. Despite his general tarnished reputation with Above, there must be a little divine grace still surrounding him to thank for that bit of luck.

(What Aziraphale didn’t know was that, Adam did, in fact, go ask Crowley the exact same question later, and he received much the same response. Oh, there was less dithering and more sharp-eyed glares—obvious even through sunglasses—but the same Lack Of Real Response was identical. As was the slight reddening of faces. And the requests, to “please, Adam, keep this between us” and “you may be the Antichrist, kid, but you bloody well better not bother Aziraphale with this” respectively.)

After a bit of thought, Aziraphale felt reaffirmed in his resolve. Adam, while a bright child who had once been the Antichrist, was still a child. Aziraphale’s own millennia of experience with such matters trumped the simple suggestions of youth, assuredly. Imagine, walking up to Crowley and… just… telling him. Never could be done. They had to maintain appearances. ( _ For whose sake? Not Heaven or Hell’s, so whose?  _ a part of him asked, but it was so deeply buried in his unconscious that it didn’t even make a ripple in the now-tranquil pond of his thoughts.)

“Right,” Aziraphale said aloud to himself, and clapped his hands together. He thought he might deserve a bit of wine after all that, and an afternoon curled up in his armchair with a book. Yes, that sounded heavenly.

And that, as far as he was concerned, was that. He carried that selfsame surety all through the afternoon, into the evening, and most of the way through the following week. Even a walk through the park with the demon didn’t stir up his feelings, no more than it ever did; he was just content to  _ be there _ , spending time with Crowley, their auras comfortably brushing against each other like waves lapping at a shore. They talked, they bickered, they enjoyed sweets bought from a cart: all normal, breathtakingly normal, as if the apocalypse that wasn’t had been nothing more than a collective nightmare.

“Red suits you,” Crowley remarked between bites of a vanilla cone. “You should try devil’s food cake sometime.”

“Devil’s food is not red,” Aziraphale replied, and sniffed. “And I prefer angel food, thank you.”

“Of course you do.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

He got the distinct sense Crowley was rolling his eyes, even though he couldn’t see past the black screen of the glasses. “That you’re an angel, angel. It’s cliché.”

“The same could be said for your devil’s food.”

“Oh, for—it’s just cake, Aziraphale, don’t get all huffy about it.”

“Just cake,” the angel muttered, throwing the red-dyed stick of his popsicle into a trash bin as they passed by. “ _ Just _ cake. I imagine your infernal contraption is  _ just _ a car, then.”

“Oi! You take that back!” And so the time passed.

They walked all the way into the evening before retiring back to their respective lodgings, Aziraphale all the while thinking that if this was to be his life for the rest of eternity, he’d have no complaints. He had Crowley’s friendship, his companionship; he didn’t need anything more. Yes, he thought, sifting through his collection of antique books, this was all he’d ever need—whatever nosy ex-Adversaries or his traitorous heart or anyone else had to say about it.

But someone—be it Adam’s lingering powers, or some cog in the machine of the Plan, or God Herself—wasn’t as content to leave well enough alone, it seemed, because the topic came up again.

Anathema had taken to biking to his bookshop, where they would share a cup of tea and discuss classic literature. (Always steering well clear of  _ The Nice and Accurate Prophecies _ ; Aziraphale had made the mistake, once, of wondering aloud if Agnes had predicted anything past the averted apocalypse. He did not make that mistake again, and his bookshop breathed a sigh of relief because of it.) He found Anathema a bit intense, and some of her ideas were a bit out there, but no one else appreciated occult literature like she did, and it was nice to have a conversation partner. 

He’d tried for centuries to get Crowley interested in books, with virtually no success. What questionable success he  _ had _ had was limited to inspiring the demon to spread dog-earing amongst humanity, which Aziraphale would never forgive him for.

Anyway. Anathema was, generally, a pleasure to have around on occasion. (Especially since Newton, while abominable at things like naming cars, operating technology, and choosing professions, was not too bad a baker.)

She was not a pleasure to have around on  _ this _ occasion, even despite the scones she’d brought. In the middle of a discussion about Marlowe and  _ Doctor Faustus _ , she threw in, apropros of nothing:

“So, Adam tells me you and Crowley aren’t together. Why.” What should have been a question flattened into a statement, and an unimpressed one at that. Aziraphale jolted, knocking over his tea and just barely catching it with a miracle before it soiled his carpet.

He took a moment to compose himself before responding, acutely aware of the train-wreck that was his conversation with Adam and determined not to repeat the incident. “I’m not sure what the question is, my dear girl. We’re not together. There’s no why or how about it.” For all his feigned composure, though, he couldn’t stop a nervous chuckle from burbling out.

Anathema latched onto that with all the tenacity of Dog latching onto a bone, which is to say, with her usual levels of tenacity. “But do you want there to be?”

“I’m quite sure I don’t know what you mean.” Ignorance had worked this long. Blind, brutish, willful ignorance. (It seemed to work well enough for humans, and hadn’t he gone native, after all?)

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to, but I assure you: there is nothing there.” The corner of his mouth twitched, just slightly, downward. “To coin a human expression, you’re seeing ghosts. Even though, well, those don’t exist, per se…”

The look she fixed him with gave him the distinct impression that she was not only seeing him as he presented himself, clothed in a comfortable mortal form, but him as he truly was—glowing, ethereal, with an aura as bright as the artificial lighting in Heaven, wings and overabundance of eyes and all. It made him feel slightly antsy, as though someone was doing the gavotte on his grave. (Not that he planned to have one of those, ever. The closest he’d come to the last hurrah was handily averted by the advice of this very girl’s thoughtful ancestor.)

He coughed politely. She squinted harder. The discomfort intensified into vexation, and “Do you, perhaps, need new glasses?” popped out of his mouth before he could think twice. Vague guilt flared up briefly within him, chased by the knowledge that Heaven wasn’t watching and that Crowley might even be impressed (or at least glad to see his testiness wielded at someone else, for once).

Anathema didn’t seem offended in the slightest, however, as she took a sip of tea (still peering at him over the top of her cup; he was getting rather sick of being goggled at like an exotic bird in a cage). “Do  _ you _ , Aziraphale?” was all she said in reply, and before he could ask what the buggering hell  _ that _ was supposed to mean, thank you very much, she picked up the thread of their earlier conversation, re: temptation and demons in literature versus in life. She also picked up a wicker basket she’d kept by her feet, smelling of warm baked goods, and offered it to him.

Aziraphale might have been an angel, but he was not immune to earthly temptations. He took a scone.

Now, contrary to popular opinion, Aziraphale was not blind. He could see when the universe was sending him a sign—especially one like this, neon with many explicit words spelling things out—he just often chose to ignore it. He’d gotten rather good at that, made it into an art form and taught a class on it every other Wednesday. So when Anathema thanked him for the illuminating discussion, made a vaguely ominous statement regarding the weather, and biked off, Aziraphale did not acknowledge her earlier question. He did not bring up the many things he  _ actually _ had to say on the topic. He did not, for a moment, suggest that she could, just maybe, be onto something.

He went inside and ate four more scones, instead.

Crowley dropped by that night, with a bottle of wine held casually in his fingers and a loose smile draped on his face. The image of him, standing in the doorway, backlit by the street lamps, naught but a dark silhouette with a devilish grin before he stepped into the warm light of the shop—it made Aziraphale’s breath catch. Just for a second, and he quietly cursed his weak human body for snagging on him (and his weak angel heart for causing it) before welcoming the demon inside with a smile twice as large to disguise his momentary lapse.

“May I tempt you—” Crowley started, and Aziraphale rolled his eyes, gesturing for them to take their usual seats.

“Oh, yes, yes, my dear. I believe we’re quite past that, now.” He ignored his inner voice, the one saying  _ Not far enough past it _ and  _ If Anathema could hear you she’d scream _ and a million other things he didn’t want to dissect. Rather than get into all that, he fished around for something to talk about—the most obvious thing, how nice Crowley looked, was at once the least safe—before his gaze settled on the wine bottle. “That’s a nice vintage. A miracle?”

Crowley, whose gaze had gone a bit funny at “I believe we’re quite past that, now,” blinked and coughed. “No, actually. Found in the flat, just lying around. I figured, what the Heaven. Now that Armageddon’s been averted, we have all the time in the world to wait for more wine to age.” He uncorked it and poured them both a glass, all long, languid movements.

Something about that—the  _ we _ , the implication that whatever happened from here on out, it would happen to both of them, together—made Aziraphale feel warm inside, warmer than the wine felt pooling in his stomach. “I suppose we will,” he replied, savoring the easy grin he got in reply—a rarity, once, but becoming more and more common.

And. That was nice.

The evening progressed as so many had in the past—though without the looming threat of apocalypse on the horizon, which would never stop being a relief—and Aziraphale let himself relax into it. The coziness of his shop, the warmth of the night, Crowley sprawled out on his couch like a classical-era aristocrat someone ought to be fanning and feeding peeled grapes to, the sweetness of the wine, the knowledge that they were well and truly free for the first time in 6000 years… it came together, crystallized, shining like the sun and filling Aziraphale with such a love that it simply couldn’t be… ignored. Anathema and Adam’s words came crowding back,  _ being an angel or a demon wouldn’t matter anymore  _ and  _ do you want there to be? _

Crowley’s glasses glinted darkly in the dim lamplight of the shop, and as the last of Aziraphale’s carefully constructed defense tore itself down, he realized that he wanted those wretched things off. Badly. In fact, had it not been for their attachment to Crowley, they would’ve leapt off his face of their own volition then and there to avoid Aziraphale’s wrath. As it was, Aziraphale got a hold of himself before he inadvertently miracled them off, and gritted his teeth against the unpleasant feeling of the alcohol leaving his bloodstream. If he was going to do this—finally do this, whatever “this” was—then he needed to be sober.

He turned to Crowley, who was watching him with the bemused expression of the awfully sloshed, but not quite drunk enough as to be totally out of touch with the world. “Angel? Is there… there somethin’ on my face, or somethin’?”

Well, nothing for it. “Yes, my dear. Why do you keep your glasses on?”

Crowley screwed up his face, staring up at him with his head reared back like a particularly sozzled snake’s. “Wha—oh, bugger, ‘m too in… ineb… smashed for this.” He grunted, and the remaining wine filled the bottle back up to full. “Now. Right. What was the question?”

“Your glasses,” Aziraphale responded shortly. He could recognize deliberate obtuseness a mile away, he’d all but invented it. (Actually, he’d been present when deliberate obtuseness had been invented; a Greek philosopher had gotten very excited by the realization that by knowing nothing, he could be assured of that one truth. It had been a big deal at the time, very controversial.) “Why—”

“Oh, yes, yes, why am I wearing them, I remember, you don’t have to get testy. Well,” Crowley said, and paused, settling back further into the couch. “It’s easier than dealing with the human reactions, you know. The… yellow, and everything, it’s not something they do well with. Bit bigoted if you ask me—”

“Bigoted?”

“Oh, the lot of ‘em! Very few give my lot any credit, and those that do are usually real nutters. All pentagrams and rituals under the moonlight, not a lick of sense. Or taste. And that’s the ones that don’t condemn us all! Really, all we did was fall from Her grace, infest Hell, swear undying allegiance to Satan, and spread a bit of ill will everywhere, do we really deserve that bad a reputation?”

“You did invent… what was it… oh, yes, telemarketing.”

Crowley cracked a grin at that, one side of his mouth crooking up. “I did, didn’t I? Well, I suppose I deserve  _ some _ of it. Wouldn’t be proper for demons to not be feared. But, I, ah…” He trailed off, staring past Aziraphale at something that wasn’t there—Aziraphale glanced behind him, just to make sure, but there was nothing but a bookshelf and a window looking out onto the dark London street—and sighed. Minutes passed, unmoving, before Crowley managed, “I didn’t mean to fall.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, regretting bringing this up immensely, wishing his foolish brain hadn’t gone thinking above its station. He took Crowley’s hand in his before he could think better of it, but the demon only gripped back harder, tugging him down to sit next to him on the couch. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, probably not,” Crowley agreed. “But you did, because you’re a nosy bastard, and I’ll tell you anyway.” He let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “I didn’t mean to fall, you know. You ask a few too many questions, hang out with the wrong sort… you don’t even realize, at first, what you’re getting into. Then your wings are burning off and you’re crashing, not onto the Earth, but through it. Hell of an impact. And while your eyes are struggling to adjust, and your back is absolutely killing you—and we don’t even  _ have _ backs, not like humans do, but I swear I could feel every single vertebrae I didn’t have—you get your first murky glimpse of your home for all fucking eternity.”

“Eternity,” Aziraphale echoes, thinking about another time they got drunk and everything seemed a gray shade of hopeless. No wonder eternity unnerved Crowley so much; if Aziraphale had to spend his forever in a dank cave crawling with termites and things, he’d be against the idea as well. (Though, admittedly, spending his forever in a sterile office building with a grand view of nothing didn’t sound much better.)

“All because I asked questions, you know,” Crowley continued. “Challenged the status quo. Your lot—er, what was your lot—don’t take kindly to that sort of thing. So that”—he snapped his fingers—“was that. See you down there, Crawly, have fun in Hell.” His expression twisted, not quite souring, not quite filling with regret. “Heh.”

Aziraphale tightened his grip, thinking he should say something in consolation, but not knowing what—

“Oh, right, right, the glasses. You asked about those, not my sob story, sorry about that, angel. Must not have sobered up completely.”

“No, never—”

“It’s just easier with them on,” Crowley said, plowing over him, shrugging. He looked more casual than he had since Aziraphale dropped this whole messy conversation on him, which Aziraphale was at once relieved and worried by. “Don’t have to worry about the stares. Plus, it bothers people, not being able to see my eyes. Makes ‘em squirm.”

“It bothers me,” Aziraphale admitted, and Crowley pulled his hand out of Aziraphale’s with a start. “But not—not like it does the humans, that’s not what I mean, no. Heavens no.”

“What,” he asked coldly, “in Hell’s name do you mean, then?”

“Because you feel like you have to hide your eyes from me, Crowley.”

“Oh.” The demon deflated at that, flopping back against the couch, looking oddly small for all his long lines and sharp angles and undefinable, pulsing aura, always too big for any room. “Well, I—”

“They’re beautiful, my dear.”

“Uh—”

“You don’t have to hide from me.”

“Angel, I—”

But whatever he had been about to choke out died a quick death as Aziraphale reached out, slowly, gently, carefully, and settled his hands on either side of Crowley’s face. It was smooth, as if the skin still possessed some quality of snake scales, and cold despite the warm air, and an aborted noise crawled out of Crowley’s throat.

Aziraphale brushed his thumbs over the demon’s cheekbones, because this might be the only chance he got after eighty years of waiting (or 6000, depending on whether you had to be conscious of something to wait for it), and he was going to take advantage of it. Taking advantage of something wasn’t a particularly angelic thing to do, but neither was cradling a demon’s face in one’s hands, was it?

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said. A strangled grunt in reply. “I’m going to take your glasses off now.”

There was no fight, not even a brief show of token resistance (as was Crowley’s usual response to Aziraphale’s requests), so Aziraphale slid the glasses off, setting them on a nearby table. He did not take his eyes off Crowley, and that was mutual.

There was virtually no white left in the gold of his eyes as they gleamed under the lamp light, fixated on Aziraphale with a dazed expression that left Aziraphale feeling rather dazed in return. He hadn’t returned his hands to Crowley’s face, but he found that he wanted to, badly. It wasn’t that they didn’t touch—that would have been an awkward 6000 years if they couldn’t bring themselves to even brush by each other—but they didn’t touch with any sort of intent. Crowley was prone to casual nudges, the occasional arm over the shoulder; Aziraphale, for his part, rarely initiated anything. (A hold-over from Heaven, maybe—they weren’t a touchy-feely sort, angels. Touchy in the easily-irritated sense, yes. Prone to physical affection, about as much as they were prone to disco-dancing with demons.)

But Aziraphale’s momentary indecision was resolved when Crowley returned the favor, raising his hands to rest against the angel’s cheek and neck, so achingly light, almost reverent. Had his hands not been shaking, Aziraphale would hardly have been able to feel them. All the blood that had come with this form rushed up to his cheeks and he felt warm all over, despite the coolness of Crowley’s hands.

“Angel,” Crowley rasped, and only then did Aziraphale realize how close they’d gotten, “I—I would, well, er, I want to… I’ve  _ wanted _ to—”

“Oh, for Hell’s sake,” Aziraphale said irritably, and kissed him.

It was short, chaste, not much more than a quick press of lips, but it held many millennia of unsaid words within it, and when Aziraphale pulled away, he felt a bit dazzled. Maybe humans were onto something after all, with this kissing thing. Seemed a rather efficient and painless—even pleasurable—way of communicating. Still, for appearance’s sake, he thought trying to actually put it all into words might be worth a go.

“My dear,” he started, “I think I—” And that was as far as he got.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” Crowley said, echoing the angel’s own impatience, and pulled him back in again.

_ Oh. _ Humans had definitely got it figured out, then. He was reasonably sure that kissing wasn’t one of Heaven nor Hell’s, and absolutely sure this wasn’t the time to be thinking of it. Not when Crowley had his fingers threading through his curls and was cool and insistent against his mouth, making noises that he’d never heard before but wouldn’t be opposed to drawing out again. He tasted vaguely of the wine they’d had, and vaguely of something Aziraphale could only define as  _ Crowley _ , and it was all together one of the best things Aziraphale had ever experienced.

(He was rather tickled that he was the one who had first initiated it, because often his ideas didn’t pan out half so well. Popping to Paris in the middle of the French Revolution, for instance.)

Soon enough, though—or maybe not, maybe they’d spent another decade lazily kissing on his couch, letting the rest of the world run on without them—they parted with something like wonder and soft regret. Crowley, hands still laced in Aziraphale’s hair, merely stared, pupils blown wide. Aziraphale licked his lips and flushed when the demon’s eyes tracked the movement.

But he felt, regardless of any demonic temptations, he ought to say something faced with this new milestone in their relationship. “Well. That was. Er. That was certainly…”

Crowley threw his head back and  _ laughed _ , eyes shining, hands trailing down to rest on Aziraphale’s shoulders. Aziraphale chuckled in response, though it was tinged with nerves, because was… was laughing a good sign? He’d  _ thought _ Crowley reciprocated, it had certainly felt like it, but maybe it was just a farce, truly nothing more than a temptation, another notch on his belt—

“Oh, angel,” Crowley said, and that was definitely fondness, yes, as he drew their foreheads together. “You’re ridiculous.”

Aziraphale pulled away slightly, indignant (though not indignant enough to break contact entirely). “I beg your pardon. Just because we were previously kissing does not give you the license to insult me.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I’m a demon, sweetheart. It comes with the territory.”

“No, you’re not,” Aziraphale found himself saying. “Not—not really, anymore.”

“What are you on about?” 

But Aziraphale was getting excited—he was onto something, there was an epiphany lurking in the corner of his mind, finally seeing the light of day. A priceless antique unearthed after years of being glanced at and neglected, left to gather dust and cobwebs but now seen for its true worth.

“Well, it’s just—you’re not really a demon anymore, are you? You’ve—how did they put it—gone native. We both have. They don’t want anything to do with either of us.”  _ No one cares but you.  _ “We can… have this. Do this. Whatever it is.”  _ I can love you. _

Millennia worth of expectation and responsibility sloughed off his shoulders with that one simple realization. Adam had said it. They had even said it themselves, sitting on that park bench, dining at the Ritz where anyone, angel or demon or human, could see them. They  _ were _ free, but it hadn’t clicked until that moment. Free of the apocalypse. Free of responsibility. Free to do whatever the Heaven or Hell they wanted.

And at the moment, all Aziraphale wanted to do was hold his demon in his arms and be held in return.

Crowley was watching him, something unbearably fond in slitted gaze. He found that he didn’t quite know what to do with that expression directed at him, and squirmed. “Er, dear?”

“Well, bugger it all,” the demon said, shaking his head and laughing slightly, barely more than a puff of breath. “You’ve caught up. Six thousand years of waiting and the bloody Apocalypse and you’re finally—you’ve finally—we’re going at the same speed, now, angel.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and then: “Wait, six  _ thousand _ years? You’ve—known—that long?”

Crowley turned his gaze heavenward and muttered something that sounded like “Satan give me strength.”

Affronted, he replied, “No need to be rude about it.”

The demon huffed a laugh. “Yes, Aziraphale, I’ve loved you for six thousand years. Six thousand bloody years. Are you—just now realizing? I thought you angels could sense love.”

“For me, I knew eighty years ago. The church. When you saved my books. But I never—I never thought—that you’d feel the same.”  _ You’re a demon, after all,  _ went unsaid. But those sort of distinctions didn’t matter anymore, couldn’t matter. Aziraphale was in no danger of falling or being burnt alive; Crowley would not be taking any more baths in holy water. Angel, demon, the dance they’d been doing for so long (how many angels and demons can dance on the head of a pin? two, if they’re pining idiots)—it had finished. Concluded. Curtains down, bows taken, roses thrown. The star-crossed couple had at last kissed to a thunder of applause, and now had their happily ever after stretched out in front of them.

Free, Aziraphale thought to himself again, and he was giddy with it.

“Of course I feel the same, you bleeding fool. I—I can’t—” Crowley buried his head into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck in favor of talking, and the angel wrapped his arms around him, bringing him closer, as close as physically possible and then the tiniest bit closer. Their spirits bled together, blue and yellow and red light intermingling like running ink on a canvas until it was a sunset of  _ them _ .

No, a sun _ rise. _ A beginning, the start of a new story, a new day, a new life. Aziraphale and Crowley, at last as they should be.

“I love you, darling,” the angel whispered into his demon’s hair, clutching him with the desperation of six thousand years spent and cradling him with the security of six thousand, ten, an eternity more to come. “I’m ever so sorry it took me so long. I never wanted to hurt you. I’ll say it now until Heaven crashes down into Hell, if you’d like me to: I love you, I love you, I love you. We’re together now.”

They did not manage any more words that night; they did not even manage to leave the couch, or their positions wrapped around the other.

But they didn’t mind. And neither did anyone—angelic or demonic or otherwise—else.

(And years from that moment, when they were curled together in a bed, or holding hands across a table top, or doing that wonderfully human thing called kissing, or simply reveling in each other’s company—Aziraphale would reflect that while a heart was a valuable thing, giving his away was the best bad decision he’d ever made. Look what he had received in return.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again for reading! :)


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